


white

by thefudge



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Blood and Gore, F/M, Human/Monster Romance, Monsters, ost: aphex twin - icct hedral (the phillip glass orchestration)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Shireen loves the Wall. And the Wall loves her back. Set during ADwD/Season 5. Shireen/Night King.
Relationships: Night King (Game of Thrones)/Shireen Baratheon, Night King/Shireen Baratheon, Shireen Baratheon/Night King
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59





	white

**Author's Note:**

> this little beast has been cooking in my brain ever since the show ended (and probably even earlier than that), but it took a pandemic for it to see the light of day, which is rather horribly fitting. the story is an amalgamation of show and books. For instance, you'll see Patchface, but you won't see Alys Karstark show up at the Wall. Stannis' handling of Ramsay Bolton is also more show-inspired. Also, very important, Shireen is aged up. She's close to sixteen here. As you can see, I sort of tilt canon whichever way I need to, to be honest, but I hope it makes sense.  
> Anyway, please enjoy yet another story no one asked for! (and stay safe!)

“Death will be my wedding, children, and glory.”

― euripides, _iphigenia in aulis_

i.

Snow had always been sleet growing up. It had never lasted for more than a day. Island showers made it melt and pool down the jagged rocks into the sea. The winds dried even its memory. 

Here, snow persists. Snow binds with snow into sinews and muscles. There’s a body of snow. It feels like walking on a frozen giant. She walks carefully, one step at a time, afraid of upsetting him.

ii.

Everything is a shade of white, even the frozen mud. When the sun goes down, there is the small mercy of blues and violets, like the color of bruises, but they vanish so quickly into the giant’s body. 

At night, the blackness is milk gone to spoil. Snow winks through the windows. She can’t sleep with so much white. She lies awake under the furs, mind racing, heart beating too fast for a girl with her constitution. She has been stirred like broth in a pot by something she cannot name.

Some call it snow madness.

She touches the side of her face in the dark. She wonders if the scales are still grey. Maybe they’ve turned white – white as snow.

In the morning, much to her chagrin, they are still grey.

iii.

Shireen loves the Wall.

She knows she ought to be miserable like her mother, if only to show her loyalty. Selyse is deeply offended at having to sojourn at Castle Black. But her daughter can’t pretend to share her distaste. She loves being somewhere else, somewhere that’s not familiar _._ She has been cooped up all her life on an island. Here, everything is different and there’s _more_ of it too. She loves exploring this harsh world, in the disparate moments she is allowed to walk beyond the King’s Tower. The yards and barracks house a veritable hoard of strange people she would have never met on Dragonstone. Men who pick their teeth with axes, swordwives who train along with their husbands, and children who know how to howl like wolves. The wildling clans all have names and customs and makeshift banners, just like the proud Houses in her family tree. Shireen loves to spy on them as they carry through their chores each day. 

Yet, best of all, Shireen loves the inhuman. She loves climbing the Wall made of pure ice. She loves looking at the endless sky and forest and snow. There is so much land beyond what the eye can grasp. The frozen deeps, mountains of ice, vast territories known to no man. Standing up there, she can sense so many possibilities, forbidden to her, yet so close at hand. She can almost touch them if she reaches out with her gloved fingers. 

Ser Axell Florent, who is always at her side, pulls her back sharply. She’s stepped too close to the edge. Shireen does not listen to his scolding. 

It’s Jon Snow, the Lord Commander, who most often lets her climb into the winch-pulled cage with him. She does not have to plead. He is kind and attentive. He only remarks with humor, “You’d make a better sentry than my men.”

Indeed, no one else enjoys standing up there for so long. But she can’t imagine ever getting down. When she is on the tall precipice, she inhales greedily, letting the frozen air ravage her throat. 

“Doesn’t it cut you?” Jon Snow asks, staring at her. “The air?”

Plumes of steam fall from his lips. Yet none fall from hers. 

Shireen smiles. “Yes. It’s lovely.” 

iv.

It’s only the white that unsettles her. She asks her mother, shyly, one evening as they’re taking supper, if she noticed the whiteness of the dark. The way the night seems to boil with ghosts. There’s something in the air.

Selyse sniffs, but her gaze is troubled. “Of course you start seeing such things if you persist in going about this dreadful place. You had better stay inside and do your sewing.”

Shireen asks her if she might read to her the morrow, but her mother complains of headaches. It’s always the same; Selyse does not like her going up the Wall, but she’d rather see her go than spend much time with her. If Shireen is always looking outward, her mother looks deep within. Her eyes are lost in some piece of herself, buried beneath the surface.

Shireen misses Ser Davos. _He_ would listen to her stories. _He_ would understand what she meant by ghosts. She hopes he will return soon. She misses her father too, but she has grown accustomed to his absence. The problem, so far as she can see, is that no one except Ser Davos actually _knows_ her. And we love best those who know us. 

v.

When she happens to stay inside, she swaps riddles with Patchface. Her sweet fool doesn’t like the Wall or going out in the winter cold. He likes being swaddled in thick woolen socks and eating sour cheese by the fire.

He’s writing a new song for her. It has to do with crows.

“Too many crows…little black crows… at Crow Castle...Castle Crow...” he hums childishly, searching for a rhyme. His fat cheeks chew on the tune as if it were gristle. 

Shireen knows what he means. The rookery is full of big feathery crows, but the wildlings also call the men of the Night’s Watch crows. Little and black and vigilant. Though, she supposes, it’s not meant as a compliment. The wildlings do not like their “hosts”. 

When she watches the crows, their black soon turns to white in flight. 

vi.

She’d like to talk to the wildlings but her mother’s retinue strictly forbids it. She has to keep a wide berth, they say. These people are savages who eat little girls for breakfast. Shireen does not think so. She has seen them with their own children. They kiss their little ones. Shireen cannot remember being given such kisses. She’s not a little girl anymore, but she’d like a kiss, all the same.

In truth, the wildlings are more afraid of her. They have seen her greyscale. They draw away from her path and avoid walking where she has gone. They point at her and speak in hushed tones. They sometimes hide their children. Shireen would like to tell them she does not carry the sickness. Only the ugly mark of it. But she can see why they wouldn't trust her. She is more strange than they are. Sometimes, it’s easier being up on the Wall. 

It’s on the Wall that she sees Val for the first time. Val is not like the other wildlings. Or, she is exactly like them, but she is _distinct_ in her own way. She is their beautiful princess. Val likes to climb the Wall too, but for different reasons which have to do with ranging and “keeping an eye out for the enemy”. Shireen stares at her in wonder. Here is a woman only a few years older than her who holds herself confidently upright. She dresses as she likes and talks as she likes. She is bold and brave and witty, like a heroine in a romance, only much better.

It takes Shireen many days to pluck up the courage to say hello.

Val rounds up on the small figure stalking behind her. She sizes her with a wry look. 

“Hello, your little grace.”

“Please, call me Shireen. May I call you Val?”

They don’t strike up a friendship; that wouldn’t be the right word. But Val does not mind the company.

“You’re not a little monster, as far as I can see,” Val tells her soon enough, staring boldly at her scaled cheek. “But if I were you, I’d use the fear that you inspire.”

“Use it?”

“Aye. It might be useful to you, as a woman.”

Shireen thinks about her words. She’s not yet a woman, though many girls her age would be considered so. She has been kept away from the world for too long. She doesn’t quite know what she is.

 _How can I become like you?_ she wants to ask, but does not dare.

Shireen peppers her with questions about life beyond the Wall, instead, but Val seems more interested in talking of affairs south of the Wall.

“Your mother wants to arrange a marriage for me with one of your Southron lords,” she tells Shireen. The young girl knows something of this. She knows her father has ordered that peace be brokered between his men and the wildlings in the form of alliances.

Val interrupts her train of thought. “Do you think I would make them a good wife?”

“No,” Shireen blurts out.

Val laughs.

Shireen blushes. “I apologize. I didn't mean to say… I only meant…they would not understand you and your freedoms.”

Val smiles. “Don’t apologize. You’re right. They wouldn’t.”

“I’d like to...know what it’s like.”

Val cocks her head. “To be free? It’s a hard life, little one. Worth the blood you spill, but hard, either way. I don’t think you could manage it, though you may have the spirit for it.”

Shireen steps closer to the edge of the Wall. She stares hungrily into the heart of freedom. It does not scare her. “I do have the spirit.”

Val shakes her head. “You’re a strange child.”

“How so?”

Val comes closer to her. Her thick braid looks like honey in the morning, before it turns to white, as all things do here. “You just are.”

Shireen notices Val staring at the greyscale. “You can touch it if you like. It doesn’t – it won’t make you sick.”

Val shakes her head. She lifts her hand and removes her glove, but she touches Shireen’s good cheek instead.

Shireen holds her breath. She’s ashamed of how touch-starved she really is. She wants to take Val’s hand and kiss it.

But the wildling princess removes her hand with a frown. She looks at Shireen with suspicion.

“You should be cold.”

“What?”

“Your skin is warm. Up here, everything is cold.”

Shireen blinks. “I –I’m sorry.”

“You might be coming down with a fever,” Val mutters, lifting Shireen’s hood up. “You should go down.”

Shireen obeys half-heartedly.

She does not feel ill. The next day, Val is gone on another ranging expedition.

Shireen lies in bed with the furs drawn to her chin, wishing she could have gone with her.

vii.

She manages to crack the window open half an inch. Snow spills through like sugar mice. Shireen scoops them in her palm and brings them to her mouth, eating quickly. She eats mouse after mouse, licking her lips. It tastes very good, not too sweet, not too sharp. It slakes her thirst gently. The wind piercing through her nightshirt is a blessing. The fever must have broken, or it was never there. After what feels like hours, she closes the window and goes to bed with a full stomach.

viii.

Her dreams, if they can be called that, are white.

Visions of fluttering white, like doves’ wings over her eyes.

White-limbed figures carry white cloaks which instead of wearing they drape over the world. Horses rise between their legs, horses made of milk cream. They dip their skeleton fingers and lick. The grass underfoot is made of sweet ice. Flowers bloom into snowflakes which she catches with her tongue.

She wakes up hungry again.

ix.

One day, impatient for the cage to come down, she runs up the great switchback stair. The wooden slats are not too slippery and the beams are lodged deep in ice. She’s not afraid. She can climb all the way to the top. She won’t lose her breath. But very soon, the men notice the young girl trying to scale the ice and they bring her down with a sharp tug.

She’s not strong enough, they say. She’ll catch her death by falling or freezing. Is that what she wants?

Shireen says nothing. The slats had felt like milk cream under her feet. 

A gaggle of wildling boys smiles at her as she is dragged back to the King’s Tower.

 _They must have liked my daring,_ she thinks, and smiles back. 

x.

Samwell leads her down into the vaults where the food stores and the library are kept. Shireen absorbs every chink in the masonry as they descend underground. The sunken recesses do not frighten her, nor do the smells and dusts upset her. Sam beams with pride when she declares with delight that she’s never seen so many books and scrolls.

“We do what we can. There are many more books at the Citadel… I hope to bring back a few. We sorely need them if we’re to fight the Others.”

“You are leaving?”

Shireen had not been told, but she’s never told anything.

“I’ll come back,” Sam says with a tremulous smile. “I have to acquire my chains as Maester. I’m more useful to Jon that way.”

Shireen thinks for a moment. “You said there are books to help us fight the Others?”

Sam nods. “So many old histories have sat in those archives untouched for centuries. Who knows what we might find in them?”

Shireen touches the calf-bound volumes. “What if what we find upsets us?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know…” she trails off, unsure. “What if we find something bad? Perhaps we learn that we cannot defeat them. Wouldn’t it be better not to know?”

Sam frowns. “You don’t believe that.”

Shireen bites her lip and nods. He’s right. She doesn’t. She would always want to know.

That’s what books are for, for knowing.

She does not understand where those other thoughts came from.

“Would you show me your favorite books?” Shireen asks, diverting him to happier subjects.

xi. 

Her mother makes her pray with her to the Lord of Light. Selyse stares into the fire with a kind of tormented desire, as if the flames could become flesh. Shireen is scared of drawing closer. She holds a candle between her fingers.

She wishes there was a statue of R’hllor, something more solid to venerate. Fire burns everything to ash and ash turns white. Light is only a faint presence before it disappears. The white gives off no light. By noon, the world is dark and white. No fire, no light.

Shireen walks around the courtyard, feet pattering in the snow. _No light, only white_ , _no light, only white,_ she hums in her head. It would make a good song. She runs to tell Patchface.

She’s surprised to find her fool outside the King’s Tower, crouched down to snow level, staring at something small and dark. A dead crow with a broken wing.

“Leave it alone, Patches. Don’t touch it. It’s full of worms, I bet. Listen, I have a new song –”

But Patchface turns around, his mouth a leer. He points a finger at her and begins to sing.

“ _In the white he’ll come for you, I know, I know, oh oh oh_

_In the white he’ll dance with you, I know, I know oh oh oh._

_Under the sea, the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh oh oh_.”

Shireen shivers. She does not like this song. It does not scare her. It doesn’t.

Patchface hops up and down. He reels around her, singing “In the white he’ll come for you, In the white he’ll come for you, In the white he’ll come for you, I know, I know, oh oh oh…”

Shireen chases him until she gets dizzy. She pleads with him to stop.

The people around them have stopped their chores and stare at the spectacle.

The guards step in to catch him, but he keeps singing, even when they drag him away.

The wildlings point at her as she walks past. The boys no longer smile. They whisper that she made him sing. That she made him mad.

xii.

Shireen nurses Patchface all night. The fool is crying, his singing garbled, barely singing at all. She makes him sleep in her bed. She makes him take some milk of the poppy, but he is restless. He’s never been so restless. Shireen thinks perhaps it is her fault, after all. She shouldn’t have brought him here, but she couldn’t have left him behind. Long after midnight, she cracks the window open again. She scoops up snow, carries it in her palms. She makes Patchface swallow, but he spits it back, moaning.

Shireen sits at the window. She eats the snow, licking her fingers. She would never go hungry in the wildness beyond the Wall, she thinks.

_In the white he’ll come for you._

Shireen wipes her fingers guiltily.

She lies down on Patchface’s pallet. The floor does not feel cold. She falls into a deep sleep.

It must be Patchface’s song that makes her dream.

The proud figures cover the world in white and their horses rise swan-white between their legs, she remembers.

They ride towards her, a caravan of white, sending snow in their gallop. Her lips are powdered with it and it’s so very sweet. She is suddenly flying, falling into the sky, thrashing helplessly, searching for wings she does not have, until a pair of arms catches her and brings her down on the horse with him…riding in the snow…

When she wakes up, bleary-eyed and exhausted, Patchface is gone.

xiii.

The black brothers search for him everywhere; in the towers, in the halls, in the rookery, in the vaults. In the kitchens, in the barracks. In the tunnels, in the rafters. Above and below.

“He couldn’t have gone far!” she insists. “He must be hiding somewhere. I know I can find him. He’s only afraid.”

But her mother will not hear of it. It is not proper for a king’s daughter to run around after her fool. The men will find him, or they won’t. It is the will of R’hllor. If the Lord of Light wanted him for a vessel, perhaps that is for the best.

“How can you say that? He’s not dead!” she screams at her mother, and her audacity is rewarded with a sharp slap. It does not hurt very much, for Selyse, in her rush, hit her greyscale instead. The sound is more awful than the touch. 

Shireen wipes away the tears.

xiv.

She stands atop the Wall, scanning the white opening for a trace of him. It is no use. He could have gone into the thick forest, braided white and green, and she would not be able to see him anymore. He could be miles away. He could be frozen at the foot of a tree, just out of view.

Jon Snow does not think he could have gone past the Wall. All doors and gates are sealed. Nothing comes in or out, he says.

Yet Shireen is filled with dread.

_In the white he’ll come for you._

Jon promises her he will send rangers to search the forest.

Days pass, but no reports come from outside.

Patchface has disappeared without trace.

xv.

Shireen runs her finger over the shelves. She picks out the scrolls that mention them.

The Others never used to scare her when she was on Dragonstone. They seemed remote, a legend from thousands of years ago. There were worse things to be afraid of, like the stone dragons that perched atop the castle and which always seemed to be watching her. 

The Red Woman’s prophecies, when they arrived, did not sway her. Melisandre’s description of The Great Other as the god of ice and death, the counterpart to the benevolent Lord of Light, did not entirely convince her. R’hllor liked human sacrifice. He liked fresh blood. She couldn’t see the difference between him and the presumed god of ice. They were both cruel.

But perhaps one is crueler than the other. Or perhaps she does not yet understand. 

She just knows only the Others could have taken Patchface. 

The wildlings talk about those creatures as if they were already here. They have seen them with their own eyes, the corpses who do not rest or feed or feel, who only hunt.

She turns the pages gingerly, staring at the faded ink. She pours over maps of the land beyond the Wall. 

If they catch you, you become like them, that’s what Jon Snow told her. You become a wight.

 _Wight, white_ , she thinks feverishly.

_In the white he’ll come for you._

But he, whoever he was, had not come for her. He had taken someone dear to her instead. 

“Why did you take him?” she asks the empty room. “He wasn’t yours to take!”

There is only the scurrying of mice under shelves and the distant tap-tap of ice melting. 

Shireen looks down at the parchment with small tears in her eyes, but she makes sure they do not fall on the ink. 

xvi. 

When she was young, they did not think she would survive.

Her first memory is of Maester Cressen leaning over her cradle, whispering to her that in death the Maiden would protect her.

Maester Cressen later told her he never said such a thing; it must have been her imagination, which was rife with dreadful dangers. Like her frequent dreams of stone dragons waking up from their slumber and slithering down the hall to eat her. Maester Cressen always said that there was no life in stone.

Yet when she feels the caress against the scales on the side of her neck she swears the stone is alive.

Shireen is touch-starved. She leans into the skeletal hand. She turns her mouth towards that hand and kisses it. 

The figure hisses in surprise or pleasure, she cannot tell. 

But soon she is rewarded. Cold lips touch her scales. No one has ever kissed her there. 

xvii.

The kiss is not so pleasant anymore. It turns into a gentle slap.

“Shireen. _Shireen_.”

Her eyes open to see Jon Snow bent over her with a look of utter dismay.

Has she fallen asleep in the library? Her mother will be furious.

But no, she is lying down on something hard and cool, yet not unpleasant.

“Gods,” he curses and wraps his cloak around her.

Shireen blinks.

The wind howls in her dark hair.

She is lying down on ice. The tall sheets of ice drop into white darkness around her. The sky is very close. 

She is atop the Wall. 

She’s only wearing her thin nightshift. 

How did she get here? Where are the rest of her clothes? Why does she not feel cold?

Jon picks her up in his arms.

Shireen sees the sun over his shoulder breaking through the clouds. It’s morning.

xviii.

Selyse rages all morning. It must have been one of those “horrid brutes” who wanted to take what is not theirs, who wanted to “steal” the King’s daughter.

“Isn’t that what they do, steal their women like savages?” 

Jon Snow does not credit her accusations. The wildlings fear her daughter. They would never risk touching her. And his black brothers have no reason to attempt anything despite their mislike of King Stannis. He does not believe they would hurt a child.

Yet, it is true; Shireen could not have got up there by herself. The cage was locked for the night. Someone would have had to pull the winch, but the device was chained too. 

She certainly could not have climbed the switchback stair. Not in her nightshift. She would have frozen in a matter of minutes, her hands stuck to the beams. If you tried to pull, your flesh would come off with it. 

Yet, she got up there somehow and lay half-naked till morning.

She ought to be dead.

He has not told anyone how he found her; on her belly, cheeks and lips against the ice. 

Jon watches her sitting by the fire, her back slightly hunched under the furs. Selyse is still talking to him, demanding retribution for the attempt on her daughter’s modesty. What measures will the Lord Commander take? Will he allow for such dishonor under his watch?

“I want the man hanged, whoever he is,” she tells him. “Make an example out of him.”

“I will see to it myself,” Jon replies curtly.

He stares at Shireen.

When he found her, her skin was lukewarm, barely cool. As if the ice was her bed.

Even now, as she sulks by the fire, she looks hale. There is no fever, no illness, no frostbite. No trace of her nightly adventure. He shivers. Could it have been her fool, the patch-faced creature who helped her? He suddenly wants to see the blue of her eyes.

But he leaves before more foolish thoughts enter his head.

xix.

“Why did you kiss me here?” she asks, touching her scales in the dark.

She does not dare go to the window, does not dare scoop snow and put it in her mouth, even though she is thirsty. The past few days have not seemed anything like her old life. Perhaps her old life was only a dream. She used to read of Maesters who feared they were trapped in a wicked man’s dream. One day, they feared they would wake up from the illusion and the chains would choke them. 

She scratches her throat.

It felt so nice to be kissed there, in that ugly place. She feels guilty for liking it. 

“Maybe you will get the sickness,” she says, eyelids wet. She hopes he will get sick. 

She’s still awake when she hears a creeping voice, like rustling leaves, 

_It is not sickness_. 

xx.

Castle Black breathes a sigh of relief.

King Stannis has ordered his wife and child to ride south of the Wall and join him past the Last Hearth. The Queen’s retinue will be met in Mole’s Town by a small cavalry from the King’s force. The Queen is not happy. She wanted to see a wildling punished, but she cannot disobey.

Everyone is glad to see the back of them, the wildlings in particular.

Only Val comes to pay her goodbyes, but she does not look directly at Shireen when they speak. 

“It’s good you’re leaving. The people are saying you’re a sorceress.”

Shireen squeezes her fingers in her lap. “I’m not. The Red Woman is a sorceress, not me.”

“I wouldn’t like to meet one worse than you.” Val pauses. She seems to remember something. “It wasn’t fever when I touched you, was it? You don’t get cold, not like we do.”

“Of course I do. I must be very ill.”

“You already had your illness and survived,” Val says, nudging at her greyscale. 

Shireen swallows. “Are you afraid of me?”

Val smiles. “Yes.”

And despite everything, Shireen smiles back.

xxi.

Shireen wipes the tears before anyone can see them. She is leaving the Wall, possibly never to return. Her mother will certainly make sure of that. She cranes her neck for as long as she can to catch a last glimpse of ice.

She ought to feel relief after so many weeks of awful dreams and visions, but she only feels loss. Her heart is breaking inside her chest, as if it were made of ice, and the hurt is like nothing she has felt before. She is almost frightened by it.

She hopes it will fade as she marches south and leaves the world of white behind, but the farther they ride, the worse it gets. 

The weather turns the moment they leave Mole’s Town. The sky fogs with clouds until there is nothing but the eggshell grey of oncoming snow. The roads are almost buried. The wind screams so loud that it scares the horses. Nature rages with unbridled fury. Selyse cries and prays to her Lord of Light. Their carriage breaks down in a ditch and they must ride on horseback with the rest of the retinue. Shireen breathes in the cold air hungrily. The sky seems a little appeased to see her bare face. 

They pass the Last Hearth. The Umbers’ seat is shut up for winter, it seems. Even if they wanted shelter, snow bars their way inside the fortress. 

They barely reach her father’s camp in time before the snowstorm flattens the world. 

But there is little comfort there. 

Her father has suffered a small, yet bloody defeat at the hand of Lord Bolton’s sizable Northern army and he was obliged to retreat. Shireen wonders why they were summoned now. She thought they would only come down from Castle Black for victory. 

She is glad to see her father, but unhappy to see the Red Woman at his side. 

Melisandre comes forward to greet her first.

“So good of you to have come,” she murmurs, as if Shireen were doing the priestess a favor. “I told your father he needed strength around him. He needed his heir and blood. You are our path to victory, sweetling.” 

Shireen moves away from her long fingers. 

The Red Woman raises an eyebrow. “You have grown. There is something new in your face-”

She stops, smiles. “Beauty. Beauty is in your face. Come, greet your father.” 

xxii.

The worst piece of news she receives is that Ser Davos has not returned from his mission to the Iron Bank across the sea. Who knows how much longer it will be? Her father cannot say. He does not like that she is so attached to his Hand. She ought to show loyalty elsewhere. 

Shireen tells him instead of Samwell Tarly who has gone to the Citadel to learn to be a Maester. 

“Do you think one day I could see the Citadel too?”

Stannis purses his lips. He trains his fingers on the map in front of him. “One day, we will ride into Oldtown and our way will be paved with garlands. The Hightowers will welcome us into their castle and we will have the seat of honor. As is our right. It is not a question of “could”. You _shall_ see the Citadel. You shall see everything.”

 _Everything_. Shireen is dazzled with the thought. She rushes to embrace her father. She puts her arms around his waist. 

He pats her shoulder. There’s a weary edge to his voice. “Go off now, find something useful to do.” 

xxiii. 

Shireen watches the nightly prayers. The fires are small and weak, fed by damp sticks. Melisandre stands before them, red cloak pooling in bloody folds against the snow. Underneath, she only wears her red dress and gem necklace. She does not seem to feel the cold, although Shireen has noticed small shivers through the dress. She suddenly wants to be bold. She wants to step in front of the fires. She wants to remove all her clothing until she is naked. She wants to show the priestess what it is to not be cold. 

Melisandre turns her head and stares at her across the clearing. 

Shireen does not avert her eyes, as she usually would. 

xxiv.

She dreams of the Wall. It almost torments her with want. Shireen presses her lips to the ice over and over again, whispering, _I’m sorry I left you…I’m so sorry…_

The ice kisses back. Or rather, the ice _is_ a kiss. Sweet and sugary. It trickles down her chin and throat, coiling around her small breasts, pooling between her thighs, making her spine arch unbearably. She twists and turns on the pallet, never satisfied. 

She once heard one of her mother’s knights make a horrible joke about wildling women.

_They must take the icicle between their legs and fuck themselves raw with it._

She holds the ice there, until it melts.

In the morning, she covers herself in shame. She has ripped through her nightshift.

xxv. 

Selyse bursts into the tent with a radiant smile. Shireen cannot remember ever seeing her mother smile like that. She takes her daughter’s hands in hers.

“Melisandre has seen it in the flames…” she says, throat choking with pleasure. “Your father’s heir will rule the Seven Kingdoms.”

Shireen’s eyes widen. “Me?” 

Selyse’s brow creases, but her dreamy smile does not disappear. “Oh, no...not you, child. She means, oh... She means I will have another child! A boy, this time. One who will live. She has seen it. She says it can mean nothing else.”

Shireen smiles. “That would be wonderful.” 

She does not listen to the small voice in her head telling her she has always been unwanted and now finally, there will be a worthy heir to replace her.

She welcomes her mother’s embrace, even if it is not meant for her. 

“Our bloodline has been chosen,” Selyse murmurs feverishly in her daughter’s hair. “She has seen it in the flames.” 

xxvi. 

The weather makes a turn for the worse, if possible. You can’t see two feet in front of you. The white will soon choke them in their sleep, if the hunger doesn’t finish them off. Her stomach growls. She eats snow to make it hurt less. Their food rations are running short. The men forage during the day, but only supplies from the Wall would help. She misses the salty stew at Castle Black. She wonders if perhaps her father will send her back. 

He does not. 

She hears about skirmishes outside the camp. Bolton men hanging from trees. She hears about spies in Winterfell. She hears that the Umbers have turned to Stannis and will open the Last Hearth for him. Soon, they will march. 

She wakes up to screams before dawn. 

Shireen walks out of the tent to find a small bloodbath. A handful of sellswords with Ramsay Bolton in tow stole into the camp in the middle of the night and cut as many throats as they could, human or no. Horse’s entrails steam in the snow. The snow is the pink color of his House banners.

Ser Axell Florent and a few other good men are laid to rest the next day. They bury them in the snow, for the ground is frozen.

Melisandre has injured her arm. She holds it to her chest like a wounded bird. Her father seems more concerned about his priestess than the men he lost. 

Shireen stands by the snow mounds. No one else seems to mourn. 

She wonders if she should send a raven to Jon Snow. But what can crows do? 

Unbidden, the thought comes to mind. _If the Others were to come down and take him...take Ramsay Bolton like they took Patches..._

She puts her hand over her mouth and wishes the bad thought away.

She runs into her father on the way back to her tent. 

“Shireen.”

He puts a hand on her cheek, her good cheek. Shireen leans into his touch. 

“The Woman was right. You are warm.” 

He leaves, without saying much else. 

xxvii. 

In the morning, the watchguards wake her. They tell her they are marching back to the Last Hearth. The Umbers are expecting them. Shireen cheers at the thought. She helps the washerwoman pack hers and her mother’s small belongings. She does not know how they’ll dig their way through the snow, but she’s happy to return whence they came. She’ll be closer to the Wall, which is all she wants. 

At noon, the guards return to escort her to her father and mother. There will be praying before they leave, and she must attend the service. 

Shireen heaves a sigh. R’hllor must not be kept waiting. 

She walks between the guards, wondering why there are more of them than usual. Are they afraid Ramsay will attack them in daylight? 

She understands too late. Far too late.

By the time she sees the pyre, they have already taken hold of her arms. They bind her wrists. 

Shireen asks them what they’re doing. She stumbles in the snow in disbelief. She tries to untangle her hands, but they push her forward. She twists around. She tries to run. Strong arms block her, lift her, carry her like an offering. 

Shireen screams. She screams for her father. She begs him to stop this. She begs for his love. 

Her throat is hoarse with screaming when he comes into her line of sight. 

He stands tall and unmovable next to his wife, hands resting on the hilt of his sword. His face is cadaveric, sunken cheeks and eyes like lead. Selyse trembles and smiles with religious fervor, tears in her eyes, a hopeful hand on her belly. 

And Shireen suddenly understands. The Others won’t take Ramsay away. She will do it herself. Victory always means sacrifice. The only way the Baratheon line will father another child, the only way that child will rule the Seven Kingdoms is if someone else dies. Shireen just happened to draw the short stick. Perhaps she was born unlucky. The stars must not have smiled at her birth. She did not think there was room for her heart to break anymore, yet it does all the same.

The Red Woman stands by the pyre, a sad smile playing on her lips. Of them all, she seems to regret what she is about to do the most.

“I wish there was another way,” she tells Shireen with as much earnestness as she’s capable of. 

Shireen believes her. And spits at her feet. 

The tears that track her cheeks feel like coals, raking her skin. The dam breaks and the rage spills out with the tears. If she is going to die, she will give them hell for it. 

“I will see you dead, you witch!” she screams at her. “ _I will see all of you dead_.”

Melisandre flinches.

Shireen bares her teeth. “None of you will know peace from me, I swear it.”

The sweet, docile girl she once knew is gone.

But we all go a little mad at the end, Melisandre thinks.

Shireen glares through the tears at her puppet father and puppet mother and the foolish men who follow them. She can’t stop herself. The poison comes out. “None of you. No one will be spared.”

They bind her to the pyre as she spits out curses and gnashes her teeth. There’s blood in her mouth.

Melisandre lifts her hands towards the sky. There is a small snowstorm on the horizon. The clouds are roiling, festering, growing larger. The sacrifice will dispel them. The sun will break through at last. The Lord of Light will prevail.

“May R’hllor receive the True King’s blood as offering,” she bellows for all the North to hear. 

A small flame erupts at the base of the pyre. An auspicious sign. It quickly jumps forward, drawing its sisters with her, twin flames licking wood, making sparks. The fire soon warms the girl’s feet. 

Shireen twists against her bindings. Her throat fills up with sweet smoke. 

She closes her eyes. Her heart is filled with hatred. 

Perhaps in death she will fly beyond the Wall and leave this misery behind. 

But she does not have to die for it.

The Wall comes to her. 

xxviii.

Selyse sees it first.

Sky breaking away from sky. Sky becoming a living thing, a moving mountain. The clouds are flashes of white. White claws slash the air.

She opens her mouth to scream, but snow fills her throat.

Melisandre still has her arms raised towards the sky when The Great Other takes her.

The waves of white fall on each side of the pyre, putting out the fire.

The men cower and fall to the ground, holding their arms over their heads, but the ice finds them. It spears through their eye sockets. It pierces their stomachs. It pins them to the ground like roaches.

And if any of them survive, the six riders quickly find and impale them for good measure.

The White Walkers are ice and bone. They do not need flesh. They take it from others.

xxix.

He comes for her in the white. Just like in the song.

But the song said nothing of his face.

When his arms come around her and pull her away from the pyre, she still has her eyes closed.

It’s only when he touches her greyscale that she finally looks.

The monster’s face is carved deep. The spikes of ice which form his crown sprout from his very forehead. His eyes shine blue with death. His gaze is solemn but patient. He is not handsome, not a prince from the stories. But he saved her life and she finds she likes the unforgiving cut of his face. What you see is what you get.

She reaches out shyly.

He lets her.

She touches his ossified skin. Underneath the fear, she feels a sense of kinship.

The Night King brings her head closer. Shireen opens her mouth. She wants to eat snow.

He kisses her. His grim mouth is sweet as he sucks the very marrow of her soul. Shireen feels it in her bones, the abandon and the abnegation. She moans into his mouth, not feeling guilty anymore, and he grips her to him until she feels his hard body everywhere.

She was right. Ice is a kiss.

As he drinks from her and she drinks from him, his fingers stroke the flesh of her neck, pinching at the greyscale.

 _Will he heal me?_ she thinks, putting her arms around him.

But he had already told her the truth. It is not sickness. There is nothing to heal.

When they part, her lips are raw, almost bloody.

And he has peeled away her skin. He shows her the pieces as they fall.

Shireen gasps in wonder.

The scales were always there, underneath. His fingers pare her down with quiet dedication. Soon, her entire face is beautiful grey scales. Her throat, her arms, her hands. Hard and beautiful.

His fingers rip the clothes and flesh.

Shireen steps out naked on the snow and shows herself to the world.

She used to dream of stone dragons waking and eating her alive. And it was true.

The stone dragon has awoken.

It is her.

xxx.

It is sweet when she walks in her true body and feels its ossified power. Swords will never cut her down. Men cannot bind her anymore. The scales reflect the massacre around her. She looks at the fallen men and women. Her mother and father are among them. She does not feel pity.

The Night King lifts his arms.

And the dead rise.

King Stannis opens blue eyes open the world. So do his loyal wife and his foolish Red Woman. The wights bow down, ready to be used.

The Night King gestures to his bride.

“They are yours, as they are mine,” he hisses in a tongue that becomes her own.

Shireen thanks him with another kiss. She likes to feel his hands on her scales. There is marvel in his touch.

“How did you find me?” she asks burying her face in his shoulder. “I thought you couldn’t pass through the Wall.”

He chuckles darkly, a sound she rather likes. “We went _under_. Your faithful servant showed us the way through the sea.”

And this last reunion is sweeter than all the rest.

For in the distance, her drowned fool, her sweet friend, Patchface, comes rushing through the snow, stumbling and singing merrily as he goes along.

Shireen squeals in delight.

Her happiness is complete.

xxx i.

The Red Witch of Asshai was not wrong.

Stannis’ heir will rule the Seven Kingdoms.

She will be the Night Queen, crowned south of the Wall. She will be terrible and magnificent.

Her beloved makes her kneel before him.

He places the crown of ice on her head. It sinks into her grey scales softly, as if it was always meant to be there.

Shireen rises.

One moment, she is a translucent shade of white, the next she is hard adamant. 

The Night King kisses her jeweled forehead.

From this day on, their people will rule the land of the living, and one day, he promises her, their trueborn child will take the world and forge it anew as the land of the dead.

Only she can give him that. She was meant to bring this into the world. Does she see?

Shireen smiles. She does. She feels a tremendous love of nothingness. And she feels that nothingness loves her back.

She only feels sorry for good men like Ser Davos and Jon Snow. 

But she will take care of them. She will make sure they feel nothing. 

She takes her husband’s hand in hers and walks on snow.

The frozen giant underneath her feet recognizes his new queen.

The stone dragon takes flight and spreads across the world.


End file.
